Week 22/2025: Accentuate the positive

Week of 26 May 2025

This post is wholly researched and written by me. I do not use AI in my writing. I will always bring you my stories in my real human voice.

Monday was my last day of cat sitting when Lil Sis and Mr Tall came home and I had to say goodbye to Shadow.

Accentuate the positive

Monday morning photos

I was treated to the most amazing sunrise before I left. That, along with Hobart’s winter morning fog, the Bridgewater Jerry over the river, made for some wonderful photo opportunities.

I’m so glad I’d taken my camera with me.

Some of the positive things

One of my favourite podcasts is The Spacemakers, with Daniel Sih and Matt Bain, which is now in its third season.

I wrote earlier about Daniel’s book Spacemaker (26 June 2021), which talks about ‘how to unplug, unwind and think clearly in the digital age’.

The podcast’s first season focuses on similar ideas, looking at strategies to reclaim our attention within the everyday chaos of life. The second season was about ways you can start to ‘reset’ your life when you get into midlife and everything you thought you knew begins to unravel a bit.

This season they’re looking at what you might do if you feel stuck in one area of your life and how to make some tiny changes to help get unstuck.

I’ve been following along with the weekly episodes and doing the exercises, which has been interesting because I feel stuck in a couple of places (constantly getting injured is one of them), and Daniel and Matt ask you specifically to just look at one for the purpose of these exercises.

Just one thing . . . how to decide?

I eventually decided my main focus would be on making better use of my time, something that has been tripping me up for a while. (It’s also the thing Matt has been working on, so I’m finding his insights particularly helpful.)

The last two weeks they’ve been looking at focusing on what’s going well and working on your strengths rather than trying to ‘improve’ what you see as ‘weaknesses’. Looking at what’s right rather than what’s wrong in a situation.

There’s much more to write about strengths that can fit in one of my weekly posts, but I wanted to mention the human negativity bias, which means that bad events leave a stronger impression on us than positive ones. For example, if you lost $50, that would have a bigger negative effect on you than the positive effect you’d get from finding $50.

Five positive things

It’s thought that it takes five positive things/experiences/comments to offset one negative one. So if we don’t actively look for and acknowledge the positive things, we will likely go through our days feeling pretty negative.

Matt also observed that if you interpret minor things that don’t go your way as ‘negative’, this reinforces the your view that things are crappy. My takeaway from this is that if I deliberately choose to pause and not label every little shitty thing that happens as ‘negative’, there would fewer negative things I’d need to offset over the course of the day

So really my challenge here is to try and shift my mindset a little to, at the very least, notice when I go to label something as negative or complain about it. And at the same time to try and find the good that is all around me if I paid more attention.

I think I need a new question in my weekly summary!

Summary of the week

Some positive things

I finished a piece of work I told my manager I would have to them by the end of the month.

Even though I was too late to photograph the lovely sunset clouds on Friday afternoon, I loved how this cloud copied the shape of the hill.

Habit tracker

Habits I’m tracking

• Go outside & exercise first thing (7 days): 4/7
• 15 minutes morning exercise sequence (7 days): 1/7
• Hip exercises (5 days): 1/7
• 2 walks or bike rides or a combination (6 days): 3/6
• Long walk (1 day): 0/1
• Walk 8,000 steps (7 days): 5/7
• 9.00 shutdown & dim lights (6 days): 1/6
• Evening routine (6 days): 1/7

New habits

• Fill water bottle in the morning (4 days): 4/4
• Carry a notebook with me when I walk (7 days): 4/7
• Mid-day journalling (7 days): 4/7
• Thinking time (2 days): 3/2
• Read aloud (7 days): 3/7

What did I learn this week?

The difference between a motif (a concrete thing that is repeated in a story, such as a window) and a theme (an abstract thing like beauty, nature, violence, love).

What did I notice this week?

The new parking meter plates on Davey Street.These are progressively being updated, with metal plates replacing plastic plates or in some cases, the number painted on the ground.

1892 has been replaced, as has 1894.

1893, however, is still marked by paint. So what happened there?

A sequence of 2s outside the Telstra exchange.

What was the best thing this week?

My last day of cat sitting. I had such a great time with my little cat niece.

What am I reading this week?

• The Lemongrass Project by Janet Richardson
• Into the Woods by John Yorke

What am I watching this week?

• Masterchef Australia
• Stranger Things Season 1
• Doctor Who ‘Wish World’
• Doctor Who ‘Four to Doomsday’
• Doctor Who ‘The Reality War’

What am I listening to this week?

• Spacemakers podcast Season 3